Abstract

This study focuses on Western medical practices in the Atiwa District of Ghana. The people of Atiwa District accessed Western medicinal practice to prevent and cure diseases. Before the advent of Western medical practice in the Atiwa District, people were unable to access Western medicine due to the challenges with travelling or trekking from rural communities to the towns where they would find limited Western oriented health centres/hospitals. Although there were challenges, the local population continued to highly embrace practitioners and also accessed the basic Western oriented medical facilities. Western medical strategies were used to combat skin diseases, stomach aches, and malaria that was prevalent in the Atiwa District. The other diseases which afflicted the people and which required urgent attention included cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM), tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS among others. Findings from the study revealed that the introduction and success of western medical practice in the Atiwa District could not have been possible without a positive reception from the indigenous people. Importantly, this study has projected the relevance of public health in the history of the people of Atiwa and the significant roles played by governments to ensure the promotion of good health at the District.

Abstract

This article reveals the basic ideas of Erich Fromm’s analytical social psychology and shows links among work, character and education. Social changes may be better understood in the background of work evolution. Today the concept of waged work has been extended to unpaid activities. At the same time, the working life has been changed from a stable model to a flexible one. The work, its standards and social distribution, are also different now. Erich Fromm’s concept of ‘social character’ clarifies the changes and explains the consequences of the social changes. The relations to work are also different. During these changes - unemployment included - concepts of the unconditional basic income were studied. These concepts explain why it’s possible for people without waged work to participate in community life and consumption, without being excluded. The author presents the basic social changes that affected many different subpopulation and age groups.

Abstract

Dramatic transformations in Poland after the fall of communism and the country’s thorny path to democracy provide fascinating material for reflection and study of language in its relations to politics and social change. A review of communist newspeak, followed by the breakdown of monopoly on public speaking, the beginning of the language of the opposition, finally developing into various styles of Solidarity, serve as a backdrop for an analysis of the post-communist speech developing in diverse, occasionally opposite directions, affecting all levels of linguistic reality at different speeds, with varying intensity and degree of immunity to external manipulation

Abstract

The following essay argues that worship attendance rates stand in direct competition with current social developments at all times. The author bases his arguments upon the empirical research results found in the sociological study by Martin Engelbrecht “Human–Routine–Worship”, which determined criteria for church attendance. He discovered that people are motivated to participate in routines or rituals based on needs. These needs can be described in the following seven categories: pleasure; self-determination; self-care; locality; sense of purpose; structure and orientation; and aesthetics. Müller focuses more closely on four of these needs and explores how 1) each of these needs is influenced by social change, and 2) how this can affect the decision to participate in worship. Müller emerges with the axiom: these needs describe a person's inner demand on his or her outer world. And while religious worship addresses these inner needs and fulfils them (or not), each and every social (outer) change will correspondingly influence a person's decision to attend worship (or not). The trajectory of worship is always two-way: worship is certainly the product of social change, yet worship can also effect change in society because of its transformative power.

Abstract

This article explores the role played by public sector software (PSS) in social change in India. Viewing public sector software as a public good, it explores its potential as well as the challenges that it faces in a context in which proprietoral software is an established and dominant force. Using both theory and examples, it argues that state investment in this public good makes infinite sense in the context of e-governance and commitments to access and affordable use of information resources for all its citizens. Based on the principles of Free Open Source Software (FOSS), PSS offers not only possibilities of access but also adaptation and use by a variety of ‘recursive publics’. Using the example of PSS in the Southern Indian state of Kerala, it offers insights into the practical benefits of software deployed for the common good.

Sociological Approach on Sports Ethics in a Context of Social Change

In exploring sports ethics as a sociological phenomenon, I have tried to demonstrate how alterations in the nomos of the field of competitive practices (in the sense of Bourdieu), have unexpectedly unleashed a chain of events that have ultimately weakened the ethical principles of modern sport, imposing contradictions upon the way these are manifested in practice. Our theoretical approach to ethics was developed from the contribution of Durkheim, Weber and Elias.

The universe of our study was the Portuguese reality during the Democratic state as a case study of the phenomenon. The information collected in our research has required different methods of analysis (qualitative and quantitative) and sources of data (official statistics, news from media, participate observation and interviews).

Of the changes that took place in the last quarter of the 20th century in the Portuguese sports field, I have identified the inextricable interdependence of sporting, economic and symbolic dimensions as the main determining factor behind the victory-oriented approach to sporting action, which in turn has led to a radicalization of rival interests and an intensification of competition.

As a result of this, there have been changes in the ethos of sporting interaction, weakening the principle of fair play and leading to an increase in practices that undermine it. This has meant that refereeing has become much more difficult, with increased distrust in the fairness of the competition, a situation which is aggravated by cases of corruption and doping. In this context, actors and organizations have become more involved in the ethical regulation of their sport in the Portuguese society. As a result, regulation has become more flexible and open to negotiation, both through institutional channels, and through strategies of pressure and persuasion in the (highly mediatized) public sphere. Thus, contingent solidarities have been strengthened to the detriment of organic solidarities.

The growing distrust, together with the dynamics of surveillance and supervision launched in the 1990s, have also contributed to the activation of mechanical solidarities within groups with shared interests, in a context of opposition-confrontation or radicalization. This has been propitious to manifestations of collective violent revolt, and to the institution of forms of premeditated violence between some groups of ultra fans. Consequently, the undermining of ethical regularization has become even more visible, particularly in the field of top-level professional football.

In response to the specific nature of the ethical conflicts in the sports figuration, states have intervened at national and European level by enshrining ethical principles in the form of legal provisions, defining systems of sanctions and penalties. This has resulted in a weakening of the autonomy enjoyed by sporting organizations, a principle that ultimately derived from the freedom of sporting associative movement in civil society.